Michelle Vanek Vanished on a Hike 19 Years Ago. This Is How We Finally Found Her Remains.
Plus, take the Fat Bear Week quiz
It’s my favorite time of year. The leaves are changing, the air is chilly at night, and here in Santa Fe, it smells like roasting chiles. This is the best time to camp and soak it all in, which we did as a family last weekend.
What I’m Reading
Michelle Vanek Vanished on a Hike 19 Years Ago. This Is How We Finally Found Her Remains.
She was the only hiker ever to die while seeking the summit of central Colorado’s most famous 14er. A member of the successful search team investigates who she was, how her death—and her recovery 19 years later—impacted her family, and what we all need to consider before heading into the alpine.
By Ted Katauskas
This story has been in the works for ages, and I’m beyond thrilled to see it live. It’s moving and heartbreaking, and it’ll also make you think twice the next time you’re considering choices in the backcountry.
What the press release didn’t say was that other than personal effects, the only actual biological evidence Erika and Zach recovered at the site was a right temporal lobe skull fragment about the size of a walnut, just one of 206 bones in the human body. At a press conference, the county sheriff convened outside VMRG’s Edwards headquarters three days later—as Zach, Erika, and others bathed uncomfortably in the lights of TV news reporters jockeying for interviews—I stood off to the side unnoticed, watching, thinking, planning. Because once Zach and Erika had found the place where we believe Michelle Vanek had died, as the team’s cadaver dog handler, it became my responsibility to lead an expedition into the high alpine that would finally bring Michelle home to her family.
The New Hotness
The sport of aufguss, or competitive sauna, is full of surprises
By Pat Cassels
As the performance drew to a close, Fire and Ice stopped spinning the towels. They unfurled them and threw the cloths across the room. In defiance of aerodynamics as I understand the concept, the towels remained flat and rigid as they soared over 100 sweaty heads and landed, perfectly, in the hands of the opposite Celestial Sister. The sauna, historically society’s most sedate and lizardlike locale, went wild. So did I, even though I had no idea what I had just watched.
The heat is on.
The Bowling Alley: It’s a Woman’s World
Even when it was considered socially unacceptable, American women were knocking down pins on the local lanes.
By Betsy Golden Kellem
Even so, women were instrumental to bowling’s development as a popular pursuit. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when (white) women like Daisy Clark went to bowl in public, they were pushing at social conventions. Even if women bowled in long skirts and high collars, there was a sense that they were out of place at the alley, invaders in a presumed male domain. Schmidt quotes Helen Luccesi, who recalled that when she “started bowling at Bauer’s Rec, they would put up a bedsheet to separate the alleys from the bar. They thought a decent woman wouldn’t sit at the bar.”
Love Pumpkin Spice Lattes? Learn Some of Its Spicy History.
Temperatures are cooling and the sun is setting earlier: Fall is on the way. And with it, autumnal goodies like apple cider, pumpkin bread and those all-too-popular pumpkin spice lattes.
By Jaclyn Diaz
It was around the 19th century, that records show people started to use spicy in other less literal ways, he said. It can also refer to “racy” or “engagingly provocative” in reference to scandalous gossip or anything tantalizing.
“It’s smart. It’s stylish. It’s anything that has the impression of giving something sharp, poignant, interesting, out of the way, biting, whatever you want,” Liberman said.
Last but Not Least
Take the Quiz: Which Fat Bear Are You?
Fat Bear Week is back, and so are the chunky contenders. Discover whether you’re more Floatato, Grazer, or Baby.
By Jessica Campbell-Salley
An excellent way to pick your bear for each day of the bracket is to try to figure out which one speaks to you the most—the real you, if you were a bear lucky enough to live in the salmon-rich waters of Katmai. We’ve made that process easier by building a quiz to help you determine your match.